Army Men - Soldiers of Misfortune (Wii) - Review by Chris

Introduction

The Army Men series, a franchise owned by Take Two, has made many appearances over the years on many consoles, primarily starting on the Playstation 1. Since then, the franchise has been passed around on whatever console takes its fancy and as a result, it hasn't built up a reputation for being a staple franchise which gamers should continually play on their consoles. And so we come to Soldiers of Misfortune, the first iteration of the series on the Wii and on this current generation of hardware. But does this title buck the tread for better or for worse?

Gameplay

Contrary to what its predecessors have laid before it, Soldiers of Misfortune does away with the consistent mechanics found in those titles and changes everything, but not for the better. Instead of taking control of the small green army men, you now play as Tommy who has shrunk himself down to their height so as to help the greens stop the tanned soldier from continually kidnapping the green ones and recapture these rogue soldiers. The game is played out as a third person shooter, with the camera sitting behind Tommy in the typical third person style. This story is conveyed to you as the player before you even get to the main menu, as you'll be made to watch a series of still images with captions detailing this story. And it's not much of a story at that, being clichéd. However, story was never a strong point in the Army Men series and so it's no surprise to see that it's no difference here.

Gameplay revolves around a series of small missions: 5 mission objectives which take place in a number of rooms in the house, played out as a third person shooter, with the camera sitting behind Tommy in the typical third person style. These missions have you traversing the environment collecting a certain number of supply crates or liberating your captured green comrades. These overly simplistic missions are ideally aimed at much younger gamers, but they quickly become tedious due to lack of mission variation and even those younger gamers will not stay long due to this and to many of the game's frustrating features.

Controls

Any gamer, regardless of their experience of third person shooters or shooter in general, will know that controls are everything, not just in this genre but in gaming as a whole. However, the controls here are where the game falls completely on its face. Movement is handled with the analogue stick on the nunchuk, aiming and looking about is done with the Wii-mote and shooting is done with the B button. That's about it. Simplistic, in the hope of getting people playing it with ease. Yet these controls are anything but easy. The controlling of Tommy has been very poorly implemented, mainly due to poor IR tracking. The aiming is slow, jittery and, in my experience, stops working altogether when you aim within 2 or 3 inches of the right of the screen. The poor controls are to be expected. It is a budget title after all. But this large deadzone of inactivity on the right of the screen is an absolute bane that makes an already shoddy control scheme even worse. Trying to move Tommy around the intricate pathways and ledges is a feat in itself because of how bad the controls are and you'll constantly find yourself falling off and having to start all over again.

Graphics

The game doesn't get off to a good start in this department. You're instantly hit with the static imageboard used to convey the story before you get to the menu, and the images are of pretty poor quality. Menus seem very claustrophobic, partly due to the camouflage background which pulls everything in, and lack any real detail, which doesn't set you up with good hopes for what you'll see when you start playing. When you do eventually get into playing, what you get isn't bad, but it's by no means great. Tommy's character model is probably the best piece of graphical work. Everything else is a bunch of jagged, low poly count mess which wouldn't be out of place in an N64 title. The environments are of a decent scale and offer a decent variety of objects, giving good scope for exploration, but they all look terrible and out of place in a Wii title. The Wii is able to do much more than this and other budget titles, not only from Zoo Digital but from other developers, have shown that you can still have decent quality graphics in your budget titles.

Sound

The best way to sum the music and sound in the game would be to simply say 'Where is it?' The sound effects and music are virtually non-existent and when you do hear anything, it's of poor quality and really doesn't bring anything to the game.

Final comments

The Wii is known as being the new home of shovelware, and that's really all Army Men: Soldiers of Misfortune is. Poor quality gameplay, graphics and controls are commonplace in these types of titles but this takes the proverbial biscuit. If you've been given this title or you've bought it, then it is you who is the true soldier of misfortune because you won't find any fun here, other than that which you'll get from removing it from your console and putting something else in. Avoid at all costs.

Pro: Environments offer a decent amount scale
Con: Just about every aspect of the game is really below standard, even for a budget title
Final score: 2

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